Budde has shown in his Kanon des Alten Testaments, 1900, that the Old Testament which lies before us finished and complete, assumed its present form only as the result of the growth of several centuries.  At the beginning of this process of the canonisation stands that strange event, the sudden appearance of a holy book of the law under King Josiah, in 621 B.C.  The end of the process, through the decisions of the scribes, falls after the destruction of Jerusalem, possibly even in the second century.  Lagarde seems to have proved that the rabbis of the second century succeeded in destroying all copies of the Scripture which differed from the standard then set up.  This state of things has enormously increased a difficulty which was already great enough, that of the detection and separation of the various elements of which many of the books in this ancient literature are made up.  Certain books of the New Testament also present the problem of the discrimination of elements of different ages, which have been wrought together into the documents as we now have them, in a way that almost defies our skill to disengage.  The synoptic Gospels are, of course, the great example.  The book of the Acts presents a problem of the same kind.  But the Pentateuch, or rather Hexateuch, the historical books in less degree, the writings even of some of the prophets, the codes which formulate the law and ritual, are composites which have been whole centuries in the making and remaking.  There was no such thing as right of authorship in ancient Israel, little of it in the ancient world at all.  What was once written was popular or priestly property.  Histories were newly narrated, laws enlarged and rearranged, prophecies attributed to conspicuous persons.  All this took place not in deliberate intention to pervert historic truth, but because there was no interest in historic truth and no conception of it.  The rewriting of a nation’s history from the point of view of its priesthood bore, to the ancient Israelite, beyond question, an aspect altogether different from that which the same transaction would bear to us.  The difficulty of the separation of these materials, great in any case, is enhanced by the fact alluded to, that we have none but internal evidence.  The success of the achievement, and the unanimity attained with reference to the most significant questions, is one of the marvels of the life of learning of our age.

In the Jewish tradition it had been assumed that the Mosaic law was written down in the wilderness.  Then, in the times of the Judges and of the Kings, the historical books took shape, with David’s Psalms and the wise words of Solomon.  At the end of the period of the Kings we have the prophetic literature and finally Ezra and Nehemiah.  De Wette had disputed this order, but Wellhausen in his Prolegomena zur Geshichte Israels, 1883, may be said to have proved that this view was no longer tenable.  Men ask, could the law, or even any greater part of